Preserving vanilla unbalanced DF with exploits or fixing it?

[jayhova]

No, I meant that "time" is nothing in TES game, so using it to limit something is automatically useless and overall bad game design, unless it's changed somehow. Eating and aging are actually even worse game design and were only examples. For example Skyrim has food mods, but they are all stupid and only force players to do more mouse movements and clicks and clutter their inventory with garbage food items. This is wrong approach and may be good only for certain hardcore RPers who REALLY want to be immersed, when they click on that food, imagining that they're eating it.

For Skyrim making time valuable is very easy: Alduin could be destroying cities one by one, if you're too late and he destroyed all cities - game over. Or opposing side (Empire or Stormcloaks) could be capturing your side cities over time, if you lose the war - game over. This way player can't just wait for ages and he doesn't need to perform idiotic tasks like eating food. Time becomes a resources and thus now you need to spend your time wisely.

In Daggerfall, I don't know. May be Daggerfall's ghost can become more and more aggressive over time and send undead minions to other cities and provinces? Or instead of level scaling, add time scaling - creatures and NPCs level with time, thus if you're waiting for too long - you become relatively weaker. Something like that. Then waiting for days/weeks/months for a newer quest may become a strategic choice or a mistake.

Daggerfall is not designed as a game it is designed as an RPG simulator. If I am playing D&D I can just say I'd like to spend a year in my new house decorating it and searching for a new wife. Maybe the DM tells you that after a month you get a letter telling you that someone has found your mortal enemy and to meet the at the Adulterous Goblin in a week. To which you say 'Nah, I'm gonna see if I can convince the Baron to let me marry his youngest daughter' This is the essence of the RPG. "Good game design" is often code for scripted stories where you are just a device to advance said story.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

No, I meant that "time" is nothing in TES game, so using it to limit something is automatically useless and overall bad game design, unless it's changed somehow.

IIRC reputation with factions and guilds decays with time, so waiting too much for quests could potentially be detrimental as you could lose more reputation than you gain.